With the Immersive View, Google Maps is no longer missing much from the Sim City copy

Immersive View will now be gradually rolled out for Google Maps and appear on various platforms. The search engine giant already announced the new function at the Google I/O in May 2022.

This feature was initially released for February 2023 in select cities including London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. More and more pictures are now appearing on the internet, including Berlin as of recently.

Other cities will follow in the coming months.

Google Immersive View: How it works

With the new feature Immersive View, Google Maps gets a new level of display. A complex AI is used to prepare the three-dimensional environments for you. You could describe it as a combination of Google Earth and the photos from Google Maps.

The new function reminds us a little of Sim-City:

Immersive View is gradually being rolled out for Google Maps users.

The scenery also adapts dynamically to the time of day and includes the current weather conditions, as the Reddit post by user Vegetable_Book_8493 impressively shows.

According to the user, this view now also applies to the capital Berlin. If you happen to be in one of the cities mentioned above, you might be able to access the new feature. However, the rollout is probably going very slowly, which is why not all users can access the new feature.

Apart from the exciting aerial photos of sights, traffic and weather information, the immersive view offers many insights into nearby shopping opportunities.

The function called “Search with Live View” will also be rolled out for other cities.

Immersive View dynamically adjusts to the time of day.

However, if you want to use the new Google Maps function, you should be prepared for high data consumption. According to a Redditor, around 2 GB of data volume was used within half an hour.

Indoor Live View: AR feature is being expanded

Apparently, with all the AI ​​features, indoor live view will be available on more than 1000 new locations such as airports, train stations, and shopping malls. Among others in Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Paris, Prague and many other cities.

The feature is based on argumented reality and displays AR arrows for: nearby toilets, taxi ranks, car rental companies and other points of contact. This function is by no means new. This feature has been available in the USA since 2021.

It looks like we can also use the new, AI-supported functions for Google Maps in Germany. What do you think of the new features for Google Maps? Would you Immersive View give it a chance and try it out as a test – or do you think it’s unnecessary frills? Write it to us in the comments!